News & Events

NRF 2019

Mobile Payments: a guide for retailers

We are pleased to introduce a Guest Post by Michael Koploy, an analyst who has been looking at mobile payment from the retailers' perspective. We hope you find Michael's work useful and interesting and we thank him for his contribution.

Back in July 2011, US technology research company Gartner predicted that mobile users would jump to over 141 million in 2011, a nearly 40 percent jump from a year prior. And near field communication (NFC), the RF technology to facilitate payments from these devices, has been popular in the news. For example, Visa recently approved select handsets to use its payWave scheme, a big step in expanding the reach of mobile payments.

Mobile Payment Guide for RetailersAt the same time, Gartner and other advisories predict that the mass adoption of payments could take a number of years - some even saying it could be a decade. The entire ecosystem isn’t there yet - manufacturers need to produce the phone, banks need to figure out how important mobile payments will be and market accordingly, and retailers need to figure out if they need to upgrade their hardware and the impact of increased interchange rates.

Software Advice, a site that helps software buyers research enterprise solutions, has been hearing from a lot of merchants that are unsure what this technology even is. “How much will processing these payments cost?”, “What are the security implications to be aware of?” and “What the heck are mobile payments?” are just a few of the queries they’ve heard from retailers.

To help address this gap in knowledge, I have put together a guide and FAQ to help retailers understand the technology and ecosystem around mobile payments. Check it out at Mobile Payments: FAQs for Retailers.